Etymologies

Middle English seigniorie, from Old French, from seignor, seignior; see seignior.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Old French signorie, from signor + -ie. (Wiktionary)

Examples

Sometimes during war the seignior's wife and daughters were reduced to plowing in the fields and laboring with the women servants at the harvest; but ordinarily the life at the seigniory was a life of petty grandeur, with such style as the backwoods afforded.

Influenced by the liberal doctrines of the Enlightenment, German reformers tried to accelerate and regulate this process by limiting seignorial dues and services in hopes that liberation from the most oppressive aspects of seignorialism and a larger stake in the produce of a seigniory would encourage peasants to work harder.

It did not properly make a part of the dominions of the Duke of Burgundy, but had been placed in his hands in pawn or in pledge, for the repayment of a considerable sum of money, due to Charles by the Emperor Sigismund of Austria, to whom the seigniory of the place belonged in property.

But whatever she did by day, she danced by night, with her wild gyration and gesture, as naturally as a moth flies; and when not in demand with the seigniory, was wont to perform in even keener force and fire at the quarters, to an admiring circle of her own kind, with ambitious imitators on the outskirts.

He asked for the more important tract lying west of the little river at Malbaie and stretching to the seigniory of Les Eboulements, Fraser for that lying east of the river and stretching some eighteen miles along the St. Lawrence to the